Paris in Color (c. 1909-30)

They also are a particularly lovely and haunting reminder of how our imagined view of the past can be limited in ways we don’t even think about. It’s been mentioned before with regard to vintage color photography — and I really think it’s true — that the dominance of black-and-white historic images has us unconsciously assuming that the world of our ancestors was sort of gray and grimy. When we’re lucky enough to find well-preserved color images from the turn of the century, it truly feels like a peering through a window into a lost universe.